Marcus had quickly come to learn that Kathy hadn’t been exaggerating when she told him the pranks were an ongoing thing. Pulling off the road, Marcus turned to Roni, who was focused on her cell phone. “So, basically, you and Eli have an inherent natural drive to win and prevail, and you exercise that drive on each other?”
“Don’t try to understand or rationalize our sibling bond, Marcus. I’m not sure it’s possible.” Roni had planned to avoid her mother, but Kathy was waiting—arms folded—at the front of the main lodge when they arrived. “Great,” she mumbled as they exited the car. “I get to have another lecture about living in sin.”
“I don’t know . . . I’m pretty sure a scenario of a pure little virgin being corrupted is a fantasy we could work with. If you think it’ll hurt too much, I could just put the head in.”
“Perve.”
“Ha, you smiled!”
“I do not smile.”
“Sure you don’t, Dimples.” He grinned at her low growl.
As Roni neared, Kathy said, “You haven’t been answering my calls.”
Roni expertly dodged her mother and walked straight into the lodge. “Because I only like intelligent conversation. Besides, Marcus and I have been . . . busy.”
Kathy followed her into the relatively empty living area. “Females should save themselves for their mate.” From her seat on the sofa, Janice nodded her agreement. Eli just snickered.
“Mom, I wasn’t a virgin before Marcus, so I hardly think it matters.”
Janice sneered. “You’re a constant embarrassment to your mother.”
“Well, I do try.” As Marcus came up behind Roni, her aunt immediately perked up and flashed him a flirtatious smile. Typical. And creepy. Ignoring Eli’s smug grin, Roni gave him a nod of greeting.
He arched a brow. “What, no scowl? No outburst? No attempt to get me in a headlock?”
Studying an imaginary speck of dirt on her T-shirt, she asked, “Have you checked your Facebook profile recently?”
He stiffened. “My Facebook profile?”
Roni shrugged. “I could be wrong, but you might find that your inbox is pretty full.” Eli immediately dug his phone out of his pocket.
Slipping an arm around her, Marcus splayed a possessive hand on her stomach. “What did you do?” He remembered her using her cell in the car, but he hadn’t thought she was hacking into Eli’s Facebook account.
She shrugged again. “Not much. I just sent out a little message.”
Eli’s face turned a worrying shade of red. “Oh my God! I can’t believe you did that!”
“Did what?” asked Marcus.
“You sent this to every single person on my friends list?”
His pretty little wolf somehow looked the image of innocence. “What did she do?”
Outraged, Eli explained, “She sent this out to every single one of my Facebook friends: ‘MALE SUB SEEKS MALE DOM. MUST ENJOY ANAL SEX AND BE WILLING TO EXPERIMENT. NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED.’”
Marcus couldn’t help it—the laughter simply exploded out of him.
“Sis, you’re evil! Everyone now thinks I’m gay, submissive, and into kinky shit!”
“How many responses have you gotten so far?” chuckled Marcus.
“A shocking amount. I wouldn’t have even suspected these people were into this stuff.” Eli looked at Roni like he wanted to strangle her. “I will get you back for this.”
“So you always say, little brother.”
“Roni, how could you?” Kathy turned to Marcus. “Still think ‘petulant’ can’t be applied to her? Honestly, she’s so immature, it’s embarrassing.”
Sometimes, Marcus really wanted to yell at this woman. “That’s not petulant or immature, it’s inventive and hilarious. Your daughter never fails to make me smile.”
She snickered. “Well, I’m guessing she must be very talented at making you ‘smile.’”
Picking up the double meaning, Marcus released Roni and turned to Kathy. “Don’t talk about Roni like that.”
The dark, menacing tone made Roni tense. Marcus looked just as he had on Quinn’s territory—intense, dangerous, and intimidating. Crap. Not that she thought he’d actually attack her mother. No, the problem was that Eli had straightened in his seat, his wolf watchful and weighing whether Marcus was a threat that needed dealing with. This could get bad.
Kathy gasped. “Excuse me? She’s my daughter.”
“Which is all the more reason why you should talk to her and about her with respect.”
Roni tugged on his arm. “Marcus, just leave it.”
“No, I won’t leave it. All she ever does is put you down, criticize you, and make out like you need to change—and all because she can’t handle that you’re more dominant than she is.” Surprise flashed on Kathy’s face. “What, you think no one senses it just because you dictate to her like she’s less dominant than you?”
Again, Roni pulled on his arm. He didn’t budge.
“Do you really think it’s fair to do that to save your pride?” continued Marcus. “You treat her like a victim because you think making her look weak will make you look stronger.”
Roni yanked his arm this time. He still didn’t move. Trying a new tactic, she proceeded to leave the lodge, hoping he would follow her.
“You think you know my Roni so well, don’t you?”
“I know her a lot better than you do. Oh, and she’s my Roni, just to be clear.”
Outside, he trailed after Roni, calling out her name. She didn’t even slow down as she stalked to her lodge. Yeah, okay, he knew dominant females liked fighting their own battles. And yeah, okay, arguing with her mother probably hadn’t earned him brownie points. But he hated seeing that strained expression on Roni’s face, hated seeing the hurt in her eyes.
He found her in the kitchen making coffee. “Why do you let her get away with it?” He hadn’t wanted to snap at her, but his anger at Kathy was still fresh in his system.
Avoiding his eyes, she said, “Let it alone.”
Cupping her chin, he lifted her head to meet her gaze. “Roni, you don’t deserve that. Why do you take it? Why do you accept it, day in, day out?”
“She’s my mother. I’m supposed to take whatever she does.” As pain briefly flickered in his expression, she sighed. “That’s not what I meant. Or, at least, that’s not how I meant it.” It was a completely different situation with his own mother.
“I know.”
“Kathy . . . She’s had a bad time of it. When my dad died, she sort of . . . latched onto Nick, Eli, and me like we were a lifeline. She could have let go and died with my father, but she didn’t. She fought to live for us.”
“That’s not a reason for you to take her shit. There’s no reason for you to take Nick’s either.”
“You don’t know what they went through because of me.”
He framed her face with his hands. “Roni, none of what happened was your fault.”
“I know. The blame belongs to those fuckers who tried to rape me—I know that. But the aftermath . . . it was bad, okay?”
“Tell me.” He could see the struggle on her face. “It’s not weak to lean on someone, Roni. It doesn’t make you helpless; it makes you normal. In fact, it requires strength to let someone else take some of the weight.” He guided her into the living area and over to the sofa. Sitting down, he then positioned her between his legs, and began massaging her shoulders. “Let me take some of the weight, sweetheart.”
“I’m not good at confiding in people.”
“Then think of it as telling me the story.”
Relaxing slightly under his touch—damn, the guy was good with those hands—she spoke. “People think that if you’ve been attacked, those around you will give you the support you need. It doesn’t always work that way. The court case put our pack under the spotlight—no one liked that, and it bred resentment. I was basically alienated.”
“Alienated how?” he asked softly, hiding his anger.
“Some
of the kids used to torment me about what happened, claimed I really had been raped, used to laugh that I’d probably lost my virginity to a human rapist. The worst was the Alpha’s son, Nolan. The extremists had poked into his father’s background, revealing that the Alpha had actually been banished from his old pack when he came “under suspicion” of laundering drug money—it caused a lot of conflict within the pack, and some wanted him to step down from Alpha.
“Nolan blamed me for that. He made up different versions of the assault, spread them around. He even managed to get hold of the photos that were taken of my injuries—he made copies and posted them all over our territory.” She rubbed Marcus’s thigh when a chilling growl rumbled out of him. “I lost my friends. As for Nick’s friends . . . they hated me because he’d been sent to juvie, so they made my life as miserable as they possibly could.”
When she remained silent, Marcus prompted, “I take it things didn’t get better?”
“No, they got worse. So bad that my mother transferred us to another pack. Things were okay until the Alpha we had was replaced. The new one was an absolute bastard, ruled by intimidation and fear. He made Eli, along with many others, fight in an illegal fighting ring, threatening to add me to his little harem if Eli refused. The Alpha used to keep me in the main house as insurance. He did the same with siblings of the other fighters. He was just evil. When Nick got out of juvie, he took over.”
“But your family’s grip on you tightened,” he guessed.
“Like you wouldn’t believe. You think they’re bad now. Back then, it was worse; it went beyond protection. Even though we were all safe, my mother tried to control my every move, Nick scared off any male who showed interest in me, and he used his position as Alpha to tighten the reins on me until it was suffocating.”
As he began to work his hands down her back in a kneading motion, Marcus kissed her shoulder. “You must have come very close to leaving.” For a dominant female, that type of treatment would be unbearable—enough to make her wolf snap.
“I did. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t have a life, but I couldn’t desert them either.”
It all suddenly fell into place. “Ah, that’s why you do it.” That was why she disappeared in her wolf form—it was her only escape that didn’t involve abandoning her family. He pulled her back to lean into him and nuzzled her neck. “I’ve never bought that you spent a lot of time in your wolf form to escape the memories and guilt. You let other people believe that it is, because you want to protect your family’s feelings.” He grazed his cheek against hers. “You know you can’t do it anymore, don’t you?”
“Huh?”
“You can’t disappear on me, Roni. I won’t let you.”
She glared at him over her shoulder. “Won’t let me?”
Turning her to face him, Marcus brought her to straddle him, and wrapped his arms around her. “If you still don’t feel you can tell your mother to butt the hell out, fine. But you don’t get to run. If you shift and bolt on me, sweetheart, I will track you down. You’re mine.” She simply rolled her eyes, and he realized that to her, those words were nothing more than a possessive statement. She didn’t see how much she mattered to him, because not only did Roni not see herself clearly, but also he hadn’t told her how much he cared.
Marcus had never been much good at expressing how he felt. He could give smooth compliments, but voicing serious feelings was something totally different. He had a tendency to keep things inside, but this wasn’t a time when he could afford to do that. Roni needed the words, needed the truth in its entirety. And what was the truth? Something he’d known on one level from the very beginning. “I had a conversation with Trick once. He told me to ignore what the Seer told me . . . because he thinks you’re my mate. And so do I.”
Roni tensed, sure she’d misheard him. “What?”
“I think you’re my mate.” No, he knew it.
She practically scrambled from his lap. “We’d have sensed it.”
“Really? How?” He kept his voice calm and even. He understood why she was scared. He’d had a similar reaction when Trick had suggested it to him—it was the fear that came with “hoping” and knowing how much it would hurt to be wrong. “We’re both guarded. How would we have easily sensed it?”
Roni knew he had a valid point. It was no secret that she had a protective wall built around her. Marcus seemed so open and straightforward, but he wasn’t. He didn’t let people get close to the real him. He hid himself, his feelings, his secrets, and his anger behind the smooth-talker mask. In that sense, he was as much of a loner as Roni was. But the possibility that he might be her mate . . . Roni didn’t have that kind of luck.
“We haven’t imprinted, Roni. Despite how intense this is, despite how much we care about each other—and don’t dare say you don’t care for me—we haven’t imprinted. You don’t think that’s strange?”
“Maybe you just don’t care as much as you think you do.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. What’s between us isn’t normal, Roni.” Marcus had enough experience to know that. His hunger for her, his wolf’s responses to her, the crushing drive to possess and to keep her that had been there from the very beginning . . . It just wasn’t normal. “You’re comfortable with me. You let me in when you let very few people close. Doesn’t that tell you anything?” Slowly, he stood, but she backed away. “Don’t hold yourself back from me. It won’t work anyway. I know how that complex mind of yours works. And I know that it isn’t just me you’re holding yourself back from—it’s the idea of being happy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know what it’s like to carry the guilt that someone killed for you, to feel like you owe a person more than you know how to repay. That kind of guilt . . . it weighs you down, tempts you to keep people away because being happy doesn’t seem right.” He approached her slowly and cautiously, like he would a wild animal. “But don’t you want to be happy, Roni?”
He was right: being saddled by guilt did have a way of making a person feel like it wasn’t fair for them to be happy. But she’d never been a martyr. “Yes, I want to be happy, but—”
“Then let yourself be happy with me.” Stopping in front of her, Marcus slid his hands into her hair. “Drop that shield. Let’s see if I’m right.” He knew he was asking a lot: Roni kept a part of herself locked away, where no one could hurt her. He was asking her to expose herself completely, and that wasn’t easy for someone who had known a lot of hurt and rejection. He knew that better than anyone.
“And what if you’re wrong, huh?”
She tried to shove him back, but Marcus stood firm. She looked more vulnerable than he’d ever seen her, and it made his wolf want to nuzzle her.
“What if I drop it, and then you realize I’m not her? That she’s still somewhere waiting for you? Where does that leave me?”
“The same place you are now.” She shook her head. “Yes. Whether you’re my mate or not won’t make any difference to how I feel or what I want.” He scrunched her hair in his hands, bringing his forehead to rest against hers. “But we have to know.”
Roni shook her head again, not even sure what it was she was protesting. Being his mate? Him wanting her, no matter what? Letting herself hope? She couldn’t think, couldn’t reason, and felt totally off balance.
“All the signs are there: the possessiveness, the protectiveness, the jealousy, the intensity, the attraction between our wolves.” That gave him an idea. “Listen to your wolf, sweetheart.” His Roni wasn’t good with complex emotions; she applied reason and logic to everything, tried to measure her feelings and break them down like math problems. But her wolf’s elemental nature would be far from technical. Their wolves felt deeply, intensely, fiercely. “What does she want right now?”
Considering how close she and her wolf were, it wasn’t hard to push aside her jumbled human concerns and concentrate on her wolf. There was no confusion there, no muddled emotions. For the wolf, it was all
very straightforward and uncomplicated. “To brand you.”
Thank God. “Why?”
“She sees you as hers.”
“Hers to mark, or hers to claim and keep?” There was a big difference.
“Hers to claim and keep.”
“Why does she want to claim me, Roni? Because she’s possessive, or is it more than that?”
After a long pause she said, “She thinks you belong to her, that you’re hers to claim. She thinks . . .” She paused again, swallowing hard.
“What, sweetheart, what does she think?”
To Roni’s surprise . . . “She thinks you’re her mate.”
He released a heavy breath. “And what about you?” He tapped her temple as he said, “I’m not talking about up here.” He placed his hand on her stomach. “I’m talking about in here. What does your gut tell you?”
She swallowed hard again. “That you’re mine. My mate.”
Groaning, Marcus brought his mouth down hard on hers. He poured every ounce of his hunger into the kiss, every bit of his need, and every bit of the vicious urge to brand her irrevocably as his. A claiming between mates was always rough and fierce—even violent. Now he understood why: the mating urge was driven by the need to take, to own, to keep this one thing that would always mean more to him than anything else. He needed to bind her to him, to be sure he couldn’t lose her.
Roni almost squeaked in surprise as she was suddenly thrown over Marcus’s shoulder and carried through the lodge. She delivered a hard smack to his ass. “Hey!” Her indignation didn’t appear to bother him, because he just as roughly dumped her on the bed. Then he was clawing at her clothes, shredding them to nothing, until she was totally naked. Little shit.
The reprimand died on her tongue as she saw the darkly possessive glint in his eyes. It was heady to see him looking at her like that—like he owned her, like he wanted to drive his cock deep inside her and brand her as his. An almost territorial growl escaped him as his wolf looked back at her, so she let her own surface for a moment, let their animals mingle briefly.